


Burn

by rants_skellington



Category: Grand Theft Auto V
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-11
Updated: 2014-03-11
Packaged: 2018-01-15 08:17:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1297882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rants_skellington/pseuds/rants_skellington
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post ending A. Michael has a ghost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burn

**Author's Note:**

> I started this at 11:30 pm and finished it at 2:40 am. Slightly experimental mood piece that I'm probably going to regret at a more sensible time of day.  
> Also on my [tumblr](http://steve-leopard.tumblr.com/post/79228474052/burn)

“Do you know what it feels like to burn?” It sits perched on the edge of the couch, elbows on knees and hands clasped together, head tilted up to peer at Michael. Michael cannot bring himself to look over at it, he is sitting with one arm across the back of the couch, one hand clasped around a glass of whiskey that’s a little too full, staring determinedly at the floor. He can still see it out of the corner of his eye, a presence that swallows up all the light around him. 

“Do you know what it feels like to burn?” The voice asks again, crackling through Michael’s mind like static. It doesn’t sound like _him_ , it doesn’t sound like something _he_ would say.

“No,” he says, so softly that his lips barely part. He does not want to look over but the void to his left sucks at the corner of his vision, begging to be seen. He shuts his eyes, and it is bright behind the closed lids.

“Do you know what it feels like to burn?” He feels a hand reaching out, a hand throbbing with heat, the skin dry and splitting. It threatens to brush against his cheek and he is on his feet, the glass is in pieces on the floor, he has screamed. He does not remember screaming but he can feel the remnants of it in his throat. He looks down at his now empty hand, almost confused as to why it is wet. 

“Michael?” Amanda says, walking into the room, frowning. Concerned. “What the hell is going on?”

“I... I dropped this glass. I was picking it up, I cut myself,” he says. He smiles in a way that is unbelievably forced, but he’s gotten good enough at forced smiles to fool people. She shakes her head at him, she’s smiling too. A _You-Pathetic-Old-Fool_ smile. It is not comforting. 

“You better clean that up,” she says. She leaves. He starts picking up the shards of glass, the amber liquid soaking into the rug. Whatever, buy a new one, doesn’t matter. She wants to redecorate anyway. Buy a new fucking house maybe. Buy two.

As if he jinxed it, he does cut his hand on the glass. He doesn’t scream though, merely hisses with annoyance through gritted teeth and carries a handful of shards out to the kitchen bin. He holds his bleeding hand under the faucet, more irritated than genuinely in pain. Blood swirls down the drain in fading pinkish spirals. He reaches out for the first aid kid sitting on the counter with his uninjured hand, not looking, only for his fingers to crash into the hand of the solid fire that rests there. 

Surprised, he looks up, a reflex. He regrets it. The face looms there. A face that radiates barely contained heat trapped underneath remnants of the blackened skin that clings to its skeleton. Mostly just bone and muscle. Eyes in sunken hollows, lips withered to the gums, teeth bared in a permanent snarl. Michael swallows. He has snatched his hand back and he finds himself worried scraps of skin will have stuck to it. The burn he received from that brief contact feels more real than the fresh scars on his left hand. 

“Do you know what it feels like to burn?” It’s the same question over and over again, a maddening chant. Every syllable drips with guilt. He never spoke like this. He never sounded this unrelentingly calm, this devoid of emotion. 

Michael can remember how _he_ really sounded, he has his memories, filtered through the rosy tint of too much liquor and romanticism. He’d hated those days, but he’d never hated _him_ , not back then, not really. Not when he’d woken up in the middle of the night with the window open and the bed empty, the room colder than hell. Not when he’d fallen asleep with their hot breath mixing as they lay with heads centimetres apart. Not when he’d been the one leaving before the sun was up and walking alone into the snow. Not even when he’d said he did.

“Do you know what it feels like to burn?”

“No,” he says again, like it’ll make a difference. The ghost does not say anything else. It is a pale imitation of his best friend. 

He isn’t sure how long it has been following him, but he isn’t sure what day it is or how much time had passed. Feels like forever, like a fucking eternity. He can’t remember what he’d been doing half an hour ago. Can’t remember what he’d been doing three days ago. There were events, he had done things, but there was a certain blurry haze, like photographs that had been exposed too early. 

“Do you know what it feels like to burn?” 

“Fuck you,” Michael says. His best friend would have said _No fuck you!_ , would have said _You wish_ , would have said _I think you want to._

The burning void stares at him. He snatches the first aid kit and turns his back to it, wrapping bandages around his hand too thick and too tightly. He walks out of the kitchen and keeps walking, out the front door and down the drive and to his car. 

He hasn’t spoken to Franklin since that night. Hadn’t even thought about it. He’s been trying not to think of that night at all. The car’s tires barely grip onto the road as it bullies its way through Los Santos traffic, shoving through gaps, unafraid of scratched paintwork or cracked glass. The ghost burns in the backseat, he can smell the leather smouldering. Driving on and on, the hills leading him further and further away from home, the roads thinning and degrading. The sky grows darker. He pulls over eventually, resting his head on the steering wheel and listening to the engine pop as it cools. 

“Do you know-” Michael clambers out of the car before the ghost can finish. He starts walking, over the grass and dirt, away from his car. It’s too dark and he trips on a rock, crashing to the ground and rolling forwards, scrambling for a grip. He stop at the path at the bottom of the incline and lies there, staring up at the sky. The light pollution of the city stains the sky in the lowest part of his vision, but he can see the stars. A tall figure steps into his view, black against the sky, but lit from within. 

“Do you know what it feels like to burn?” It asks.

“I did the right thing,” Michael says. He sits up, pulling himself slowly to his feet. Pale dirt clings to his clothes, he does not bother to brush it away. “I know I did the right thing. There is a fucking _limit_ , and you were so past it that… I want to keep my family safe. I _need_ to keep them safe and you… You were a _threat_.”

He rubs a hand over his face, the bandages scratching against his unshaven jaw unpleasantly. He is so tired. 

“I needed to protect my family,” he is trying to convince himself more than the ghost now. “And you were a fucking psychotic murderer. A psychotic murderer with a price on his head. If Franklin hadn’t killed you, how long would it have been before someone else came for you, huh? And me too? I have bigger priorities!”

Silence.

“You…” He says. “You… I…”

Three lifetimes ago he’d met a wild-eyed young man with a flare gun, a plane, and an appetite for violence, and it had been love at first sight. Two lifetimes ago he’d lain bleeding in the snow as the police sirens wailed. A lifetime ago the wild-eyed young man had walked into his kitchen, decades older and yet unchanged in some unknowable sense. That lifetime had ended in fire and gasoline and a smell that resembled the putrid odour that had filled the plane the first time they had met, a grotesque bookend.

And now this didn’t feel like any life at all. It felt like it was carrying on for too long, like the smoke had not drifted away in the wind but instead infested every part of him, forcing the oxygen from his lungs. The burning void of a man stood next to him and swayed in the wind, the heat inside it causing Michael’s skin to prickle with sweat despite the distance. It stands how _he_ used to stand and it shifts from foot to foot the way _he_ did but it doesn’t look at him the right way, doesn’t talk the right way, doesn’t breathe or smile or laugh or shout or scream. 

“Do you know what it feels like to burn?” It asks. Michael reaches up, he puts a hand at the back of its neck, he pulls its face down to his the way he always used to, when the air was so cold it would numb their lips. He kisses what is left of the mouth of this thing and he breathes in the fire. He is alight from the inside out but it is so much better than the dead senselessness. 

The first time they’d kissed they’d been half-buried in snow, fingers frozen to the grips of their guns, water soaking through the worn fabric of his clothes. Trevor’s mouth had been so warm on his. It had been such a stupid moment to kiss. He’d stopped feeling cold. More likely hypothermia than love he’d joked later, pretending he didn’t see the way T’s smile flickered when he said love and the way that made something in his stomach knot.

“I do,” he says, breathing out. 

It is cold at night on the hills outside Los Santos, and Michael Townley stands alone.


End file.
